Felt So Good

The felted clogs are finished. I realized earlier in the week that I was really moving along on the second clog, so I made it a goal to finish this week. See, if I got it done by Saturday morning, I could felt my clogs in the top-loader at my LYS whilst meeting with my knitting group. My plan worked flawlessly.

The reason I wanted to felt these at the shop (perhaps previously mentioned) was that they have a top-loader which is supposed to work better for felting. I'm a little less afraid now, so I might have the nerve to try it at home. The only other thing I'd every felted was a Kitty Pi cat bad, and I wasn't really overly concerned with fit that go-round ('Allo, Cliff and 'Allo!)

When I got to knitting this morning, all I had left to do was seaming up the centers of the inner and outer soles...

(Oops -- just remembered that I skipped a step! -- the two soles didn't get loosely sewn together before felting. Crud. Can't tell which one it was now, though, so no harm done, I suppose.)

..and then I was ready for felting.

To the right is a picture of the clogs pre-felting. They are freakishly huge. Click on the picture to see the version over at Flickr with a note showing where my toes are. I never thought that these would shrink down from Shaquille O'Neal-sized, but boy did they.

With the help of Abbe and Stacy, it worked like a charm. We (meaning Stacy) threw in a little lemony dish soap, added some hot water from the tap dumped into the washer to make sure everything was good and hot, put the clogs in a bag, and then we sat back and waited. Actually, I paced around like an expectant father in a 50s sitcom, but in no time things looked done. Then it was just rinse and spin, and voilà!

I tried them on afterwards and Melissa took some picture of me modeling in the shop. I noticed that when these were fresh out of the washer, I could still see the stitch definition, but that seems to have faded as they've dried. I still see a little bit on the toes.

I'm quite pleased. What would I do differently? I might still have to wash these one more time. They're still a little big circumference-wise. The pattern called for these to be a size 11, but I wear a size 10. I wouldn't want them to get any shorter, but I would like them a little narrower. I did make the wide size, because I've always considered my feet to be wide. But I think the pattern must refer to freakishly-wide snowshoe feet. Mine are more Flintstone-ish. But I'm very happy.

This could become a Christmas thing. I hope family aren't reading this...